A WRITER’S LIQUID DIET: LATTÉS & LEMONADE

I’m getting used to power outages. As soon as the weather forecaster mentioned wind warnings, I set my flashlight on the nightstand and visualized Plan B, C and D for a productive day of writing.

Sure enough, as I was awakened in the middle of the night to the loud snores of my schnauzer, Hoover, I checked the time on the clock radio. The clock was having a timeout. Fade to black.

Come morning, the house felt colder and the grey skies didn’t bring in enough light to make reading or writing practical. The best-lit room in the house was the bathroom with the skylight, but I couldn’t imagine producing anything clever or insightful while sitting on the toilet. Flush.

I packed up my laptop (with the battery that allows a whopping sixty seconds of writing without an electrical outlet) and the dogs and decided to use the power outage as an excuse to change my writing environment. When life gives you lemons…

It was time for a latté and I opted to drive farther than usual, venturing into the eclectic, granola community known as Roberts Creek. The Gumboot is a café that I stumbled upon during my first visit to the Sunshine Coast a decade ago. With some colorful oil paintings of arbutus trees and other West Coast flora and a steady stream of beatnik coffee drinkers creating a unique ambience, I managed to pound out a solid start to the writing day.

Being only a short walk from the beach, I changed my schedule further and took the dogs down to chase sticks and sea gulls as a cool mist picked up where the latté left off in invigorating me. So rarely do I stop and smell the salt air midmorning when I’ve got a full day slated for writing!

Far from setting me back, the seaside stroll left me feeling fresh and helped set up one of my most productive days of writing in recent memory. Of course, two more café stops didn’t hurt.

Power came on some time after 5 p.m. By then, I’d wound down from the writer’s café circuit, but I had enough caffeine in me to continue writing long into the night.

More wind expected tonight. And I’m actually looking forward to it.

THE CHALLENGES OF PLUGGING AWAY

The workday begins with me sitting on a bench, writing, while sipping a coffee inside a mall in town. Every seat inside the Starbucks is taken. Laptops are open in front of at least half the patrons.

This is what happens when the power goes out.

Although the town powers on, it’s dark in the outlying areas, including at my home. We the power deprived crawl out of the woodwork and head for the town lights. Who are all these people? Other writers? Entrepreneurs? Home business operators? Getting a seat inside Starbucks isn’t crucial. I can’t use my laptop because, although the place is wireless, my ancient device can’t access the service. Add laptop to the wish list should I get an advance on any writing in the near future.

I’m guessing the power died somewhere around two in the morning as rains pummeled my windows and winds huffed and puffed, thrashing the tall pines and threatening to blow the house down. Happens many times each winter. We’ve been spared some this year. Still, the inconvenience of the moment is expected to last the full day, midnight being the time the hydro company estimates for getting power restored.

I move to a small table in the mall. Right beside the Lotto Centre island. Seventies music pipes through the ceiling: “Sad Eyes”, Karen’s haunting voice singing “For All We Know”, Chaka offering a soulful “Sweet Thing”. The classics, as I know them, compete with today’s hip hop, blaring from the Athletes World across the way. (Wish they had an apostrophe in their name. Help us, Lynne Truss!) It’s catchy, but it can’t compete with Chaka.

A steady stream of hopefuls stop by the lottery base to check their tickets. The system is down, the only inconvenience perceptible to townsfolk. They don’t know how lucky they are already.

Without my laptop, it’s paper and pencil today. I used to prefer first drafts scrawled on legal pads and plain notebooks, but I realize I’ve made the full transition to thinking and writing in front of a computer. I have no choice but to fall back on my old ways. I cannot afford for today to be a write-off. I have also loaded plenty of non-electronic writing tasks in my backpack: the latest issue of The Writer—a rare chance to study articles I never seem to get around to reading—, an old screenplay I need to reread to decide if it’s worth revising, a TV script to study for formatting and pacing.

Despite the power outage, I must continue to plug away. The brain power is on its own today.

POWERING ON

There are days that challenge us. For me, this is one of them.

I’d stayed up late last night, cramming in a nighttime writing session after having to halt my productive late afternoon write to meet up with some friends I haven’t seen since I began my road trip back in August. Dinner became one of those lovely drawn out occasions, followed by another meeting fifteen minutes down the road at Starbucks. (In some respects, I was relieved to know that the franchise closes at 9 p.m. in sleepy Gibsons, giving me time to head home with enough caffeine-infused energy to finish my day’s quota of writing.) I didn’t start reading the morning paper until after midnight.

I awoke to the blare of a ferry horn, a dog barking and a blast of broad daylight. The sun, which had packed up and gone for a weeklong exclusive European tour, was back. Welcome, for sure, but not as my morning greeting. I usually get up to see the dawn and get cracking with my daily regimen. I glanced at my alarm clock. It was still sleeping, lights out.

Power outage season had arrived! (It’s called winter in the rest of Canada.) Anytime the winds pick up, there’s a risk of losing power in my rural community. The ferry’s cry told me it was already 8:30. I scrambled to get up, walk the dogs, shower and dress, ever hopeful that the power would be restored at any minute.

Nothing doing. The pot of coffee, such an integral part of my start, sat idle. I considered using a pen and my writing journal to begin my work for the day, but I realized I have now switched to using the laptop exclusively—apart from a few urgent brainstorming sessions. And, unfortunately, my laptop battery has the juice to keeps things cranked for a paltry two minutes max when not plugged in (to a working outlet).

I headed into town. The first coffee shop was packed and, worse, the outlets were already taken by other laptop dependent, power outage survivors. I headed for Lower Gibsons, the quainter, quieter part of town, and lucked upon a table with an outlet at my favorite café in that area. The cup of coffee did not fully supplant the pot of coffee (which, rest assured, is a 40/60 blend of caf/decaf), but it activated enough of my brain to begin the day’s writing.

Already off to a late start, I had to interrupt things for a vet appointment and my midday swim workout. I dashed home, relieved to find the power restored. I booted up the laptop and heated up a can of soup for a quick lunch. Just before resuming writing, I opened the refrigerator to grab a drink. The light in the fridge was out. Power outage #2. (I hadn’t noticed the faint whistling of the trees.) I reported the outage to B.C. Hydro and was given an estimated three-hour window for the power to come back on.

So here I am writing away at the library in town. I have been inconvenienced today, but I have trudged on! Sometimes all the real power you need is the power within.